During the Transcendental
Meditation technique, the mind turns inward, experiencing the source of
thought, instead of outward, through the 5 senses.

Employing a different
faculty

Different areas of the
brain are enlivened during the TM technique, including increased coherence
between the left and right cerebral hemispheres.

Having different objects

The mind uses a mantra,
and various sutras, to transcend normal waking state of consciousness and
experience Transcendental Consciousness

Producing a different kind
of knowledge

Regular practice of the TM
and TM-Sidhis Program, produces higher states of consciousness, developing
the state of enlightenment

Universal archetypes or
"Forms"

Patanjali's Yoga Sutras
are used during the TM-Sidhis Program, to experience different innate structures
of consciousness and natural law which comprise the universe

Pure Being

Experience of pure Being

There is an absolute
beauty and an absolute good, and of other things to which the term `many' is
applied there is an absolute

There are two aspects of
life, the relative (always changing) and the absolute (ever the same).
During TM, the mind settles down to experience the field of non-change.

Allegory of The Cave
Glaucon Book VII
"And must there not be some art which will effect conversion in the easiest
and quickest manner; not implanting
the faculty of sight, for that exists already, but has been turned in the
wrong direction, and is looking away from the truth?"

The TM technique is the
easiest and quickest technique for the conversion into a more consciousness
and intelligent person, because it is the most natural.
The surface aspects of
life, which we see with our eyes, is mostly of what is always changing,
rather than what is absolute. During TM we close our eyes to
experience Transcendental Consciousness.

Attaining the Good

Life in enlightenment is
blissful, and reportedly quite good

"Then you see that this
knowledge may be truly called necessary, necessitating as it clearly does
the use of the pure intelligence in the attainment of pure truth?"

During TM we experience
the field of pure intelligence.

"In every man there is an
eye of the soul which, when by other pursuits lost and dimmed, is by these
purified and re-illumined; and is more precious far than ten thousand bodily
eyes, for by it alone is truth seen. :

The ability to experience
the level of truth, with eyes closed, is the most valuable experience, and
easily experienced through the TM technique

"And so with dialectic;
when a person starts on the discovery of the absolute by the light of reason
only, and without any assistance of sense, and perseveres until by pure
intelligence he arrives at the perception of the absolute Good, he at last
finds himself at the end of the intellectual world, as in the case of sight
at the end of the visible.
Exactly, he said.
Then this is the progress which you call Dialectic?
True."

During TM we experience
the absolute without any assistance of the senses. The eyes are
closed, in a noiseless environment.

This
developmental progress is what we call meditation for higher states of
consciousness?
True.

"Then dialectic, and
dialectic alone, goes directly to the first principle and is the only
science which does away with hypotheses in order to make her ground secure;
the eye of the soul, which is literally buried in an outlandish slough, is
by her gentle aid lifted upwards;"

TM is the simplest and
most natural of meditation techniques, allowing the awareness to go directly
to the first principle.

"Dialectic, then, as you
will agree, is the coping-stone of the sciences, and is set over them; no
other science can be placed higher"

Experience of pure
consciousness is the coping-stone of all sciences. SCI provides principles
which are seen in all other arts and sciences.

"Dear Glaucon,
I said, you will not be able to follow me here, though I would do my
best, and you should behold not an image only but the absolute truth, according
to my notion. hether what I told you would or would not have been a
reality I cannot venture to say; but you would have seen something like
reality; of that I am confident."

It is not possible to
describe the experience of Transcendental Consciousness during meditation in
words to another, though we would do our best. The other person has to
experience the absolute for themselves. Otherwise it is just a notion.
It is like trying to describe the taste of an apple to someone who never has
tasted one. But the first taste is worth more than 1000 words.

(Glaucon) replied:
"But I must also remind you, that the power of dialectic alone can reveal
this, and only to one who is a disciple of the previous sciences."

The power of transcending,
through Transcendental Meditation, alone can reveal the experience of
Transcendental Consciousness, the 4th major state of consciousness.
This experience is one of infinity, universality, and eternity.

"Practicing death"
(not literally) from Plato's story of Phaedo

During the TM technique,
for 20 minutes twice a day, our physiology is still. Heart, pulse, and
breath rate reach lower levels than even sleep. This provides deep
rest to the neuro-physiology, so one "comes back to life" with renewed
energy and alertness.

Plato's philosophy as a whole is an attempt to analyze the significance to life
and knowledge of the same transcendental field of consciousness that we can now
experience for ourselves through the techniques of the Transcendental
Meditation® program, and that we can now study objectively through the
procedures of the Science of Creative Intelligence developed by Maharishi Mahesh
Yogi.

Plato

SCI - Science of Creative
Intelligence

1. (Unity) Plato's
dialogues have provided the foundation for almost all subsequent
philosophical investigations in the West. But some passages in his dialogues
have proven very difficult to interpret. And there is no consensus as to
what exactly his position on many key issues was, or whether he even
maintained a consistent or constant position throughout his dialogues.

The experiences and
objectively validated results of the T.M. program, especially when organized
according to the theoretical map of the states, structures and dynamics of
consciousness by Maharishi in the Science of Creative Intelligence allow us
to give a straightforward and literal interpretation of many of the most
difficult and most important passages in Plato's dialogues.

2. (Epistemology)
Plato distinguishes four stages of cognitive development, each with its own
objects, types of knowledge and means of cognition. True knowledge and
wisdom require transcending the realm of thought and logical mathematical
analysis and gaining direct knowledge, described in experiential terms as
"The Good" and in terms of structures of intelligence as "The Forms."

As consciousness develops,
it goes through phase transitions of increasing integration, and the
knowledge that it is capable of comprehending becomes progressively more
integrated and complete. Repeated and then stabilized experience of the
transcendental source and structures of consciousness, results, according to
Maharishi, in the fully integrated state of enlightenment characterized by
true knowledge and wisdom.

3. (Methodology) We
find four distinct descriptions of the process of gaining transcendental
knowledge in Plato's works.
1) Question and answer method, in the Symposium;
2) Dialectic, in the Republic;
3) Practicing death, in the Phaedo; and
4) Repetition of a special Epados or word, in the Charmides.
Gaining this level of knowledge by means of these methods is repeatedly
characterized as the main theme, the essential task and program of true
philosophy.

The techniques of the T.M.
program are easy, natural, require no special abilities, and allow ordinary
people to gain repeatable experience of the transcendental source and
structures of consciousness, quickly and repeatably. We can now gain
experiences described by Plato by means of techniques fulfilling the logic
described by him, and this allows us to give literal significance to the
most important epistemological passages in his works.

4. (Self-Knowledge)
Self-knowledge was central to Plato's conception of philosophy. Purification
of the Self or soul was the prerequisite for gaining true knowledge. And
Plato suggested that proper use of an Epados would produce that
Self-knowledge which is the criterion for all knowledge.

The techniques of the T.M.
program allow one to experience the pure nature of the Self in the state of
transcendental pure consciousness, and to experience it and its unmanifest
structures as the basis of all of our articulated knowledge and experience
in higher states of consciousness.

5. (Truth) In the
absence of any method of gaining transcendental experiences for themselves,
scholars have generally regarded Plato's descriptions of the transcendental
source and structures of consciousness and the enormous bliss associated
with these experiences as fanciful theoretical constructions and literary
devices invented by Plato for various logical and pedagogical reasons.

SCI allows us to recognize Plato's work as reflecting the same transcendental
field of life that we can now easily experience.

"The Inner Dimension: Philosophy of Enlightenment, Self Development and
Spiritual Growth through the Ages"
by Jonathan Shear, PhD

All through
history experiences of deep structures of consciousness have been reported
by some of the greatest thinkers and artists in each age. Despite their
repeated occurrence, these reports have usually been discarded by the modern
scientific tradition that focuses on experiences that are common. In
contrast to this scientific view, the cultures of the East have emphasized
them, and held them to be at the basis of their culture.

Jonathan
Shear begins his work by focusing on how these experiences of the deep
structures of consciousness are contained in Plato's Republic. For hundreds
of years Plato's works have given direction to Western society. Despite the
fact that his influence is profound, many of his statements remain unclear.
When Plato talks about the highest form of knowledge, his universal
archetypes or "Forms", he is speaking of a level that is poorly understood.
Plato also discusses a means of gaining knowledge that is clearly different
from the "dialogues" that comprise so much of his work. He describes this
method of understanding to be comprised of:

a)
turning the mind in the opposite direction
b)
employing a different faculty
c)
having different objects
d)
producing a different kind of knowledge

This
description of the dialectic is central to Plato's understanding of the
world. Many of Plato's discussions of the Good and pure Being are based on
these experiences in the dialectic.

Modern
scientists generally avoid discussions of subjective means of gaining
knowledge because they consider them to be unreliable. However, all human
knowledge is subjective because it exists inside our minds. Somewhere deep
inside us are mental structures that govern reliable knowledge. By turning
awareness inward through meditation techniques the ancients discovered a
method to allow the excitations of the mind to settle down so they could see
the silent structures of the mind. Once the excitations of thought settles,
the seers could watch the first excitations of the mind begin to arise, and
it was by probing these fine excitations that they mapped out the structures
of the mind.

Plato is not
the only thinker to describe these experiences, and Shear's book describes
how experiences similar to Plato's dialectic appear in almost every culture.
They are especially prevalent in the far East where meditative experiences
are deliberately cultured by religious seekers. For example in the Vedic
tradition, Patanjali's Yoga Sutras stand out as one of the primary textbooks
on such experiences. Patanjali goes on to describe how there are threads of
consciousness that can be developed by specific meditation practices. These
threads, or sidhis, are designed to enliven all the different
characteristics of mind and body. There are sidhis to develop the mind, the
intellect, the heart, mind-body coordination, and to gain knowledge about
the structure of the environment.

Know thyself
was a refrain that was picked up by Descartes as well as by Hume and Kant.
It has formed one of the central themes of western philosophy. Shear's work
brings out and illuminates these different threads in philosophy. One of his
contributions is to show how each of these thinkers were describing the same
reality.

One of the
theoretical backdrops that Shear's work arose from was his own personal
experience. Shear learned the Transcendental Meditation technique, and
directly experienced what these great thinkers had been describing in his
own experience. On that basis he was able to integrate these different ideas
in philosophy. For anyone who is interested in exploring the roots of modern
philosophy this book is must reading.

I. The Science of Creative Intelligence (SCI)
has been developed by Maharishi as an empirical discipline to study the
various aspects of consciousness, both as it exists in itself and as it
unfolds in thought and action. Of particular interest to philosophy is
its claim that there exists a systematic technology (embodied in the
techniques of the Transcendental Meditation (TM) program) to explore the
nature of the mind from its surface activity to its inner source, a
technology which allows us, independently of all prior belief and
expectation, first to discover and then to corroborate intersubjectively the
existence of specific states, structures, and processes of consciousness. If
this claim is true SCI offers philosophy the prospect of being able to
evaluate major philosophical questions from an expanded base of empirical
data. This paper will examine some new empirical data produced
by research on one of the advanced techniques of the TM program and analyze
it in terms of its significance for the traditional philosophical question
of the existence of innate structure of mind.

II. Twenty-three hundred years ago Plato articulated the first and most
influential Western theory of innate knowledge. He held that the mind
has inborn knowledge of fundamental archetypes, the Forms. According
to Plato's theory we are born with this knowledge in a latent potential
form; experience can activate these potentials; and it is the activation of
these potentials which underlies all our subsequent knowledge. Two
major aspects of Plato's theory of Forms can readily be distinguished: (1)
the existence of an innate, non-learned basis for linguistic competence and
discursive knowledge, and (2) the existence of innate, non-learned
archetypes or structures of consciousness which can be activated and
experienced. Both of these aspects of Plato's theory have been influential
throughout the history of Western philosophy and psychology. Both have
had modern proponents: Chomsky argue for something like (1) above, and Jung
for (2).

While a Fulbright Scholar in Karl Popper’s Philosophy of Science Department at
the London School of Economics, Dr. Shear became interested in Eastern accounts
of mind not ordinarily discussed by Western philosophers and psychologists. This
led to examination of how Eastern experiential procedures could provide an
expanded empirical base for our Western theories of mind, knowledge and values,
as well as regular practice of such procedures themselves. The significance of
such procedures and the experiences they produce has remained the focus of
Professor Shear's work for nearly forty years.

He is author of "The Inner
Dimension: Philosophy and the Experience of Consciousness" (Peter Lang),
coeditor of "The View from Within: First-Person Methodologies" (Imprint
Academic), coeditor of "Models of the Self" (Imprint Academic), and editor of
"Explaining Consciousness: The Hard Problem" (MIT). Professor Shear is also a
founding Editor of the peer-reviewed multi-disciplinary
Journal of Consciousness Studies.

He is an internationally known expert on meditation experiences, publishing and
lecturing widely throughout India, China and the West.

"Morality
in the Scientific Era: Inner Awareness and Dogma-Independent Values," in
Thoughts on Synthesis of Science and Religion, edited by T.D. Singh and S.
Bandopadhyay (Bhaktivedanta Press: Calcutta, 2001).

"Ethics and
the Experience of Happiness," in Crossing Boundaries: Essays on the Ethical
Status of Mysticism, edited by G. William Barnard and Jeffrey J. Kirpal
(Seven Bridges Press/Chatham House, 2001).

"Experimental Studies of Meditation and Consciousness," inReligion and
Psychology: Mapping the Terrain, edited by Diane Jonte-Pace and William
Parsons (New York: Routledge, 2001).